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FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN ACTION

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Title: FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN ACTION


1
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTIN ACTION
  • W. James Popham
  • University of California, Los Angeles
  • Oakland Schoolsin Partnership with the Michigan
    Assessment Consortium
  • NATIONAL SPEAKER SERIES
  • Waterford, Michigan
  • February 6, 2015

2
Todays Foci Four Understandings about Formative
Assessment
  • What It Is and What It Isnt
  • What It Can Do and What It Cant
  • One Cut of Formative Assessments Cake
  • Why Learning Progressions Must Lurk

3
Formative AssessmentWhat It Is
  • Formative assessment is a planned process in
    which assessment-elicited evidence of students
    status is used by teachers to adjust their
    ongoing instructional procedures or by students
    to adjust their current learning-tactics.

4
Formative Assessment What It Isnt
  • It is not a test.
  • It is not an interim test (also referred to as a
    benchmark or periodic test) administered every
    few months by schools or districts.
  • It is not the unplanned, serendipitous use of
    student cues to adjust teaching.

5
A Turn Talk Task
  • Please turn to one or two nearby neighbors, if
    possible, selecting those who seem fairly bright.
    Assume they are not educators but, rather,
    laypeople who are concerned about our schools.
    They have asked you to tell them what is meant by
    this formative assessment stuff. Alternately,
    describe to each other what this label means.

6
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

7
Why Michigan Teachers Should Routinely Employ
Formative Assessment
  • School Accountability Because students
    performances on accountability tests will play a
    key role in determining a schools success.
  • Teacher Evaluation Because the best evidence of
    student growth in teacher evaluation is apt to be
    students pre-post performance on classroom tests.

8
A Turn Talk Task
  • Please turn to one or two nearby colleagues, then
    take turns trying to persuade each other that
    teachers should use formative assessment on the
    basis of either (1) school accountability or (2)
    teacher evaluation. Thereafter, choose the other
    reason and, once more, trot out your persuasion
    ploys.

9
Formative AssessmentWhat It Can Do
  • In a research review based on 250 empirical
    studies of classroom assessment that had been
    drawn from more than 680 published
    investigations, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam
    concluded
  • The research reported here shows conclusively
    that formative assessment does improve learning.
    (Assessment in Education, 1998)

10
Formative AssessmentWhat It Can Do
  • Two Other Quotes from the Research Review
  • The student gains in learning triggered by
    formative assessment were amongst the largest
    ever reported for educational interventions.
  • Significant gains can be achieved by many
    different routes, and initiatives here are not
    likely to fail through neglect of delicate and
    subtle features.

11
And More Recently
  • Five reviews of the research in this area
    synthesized a total of more than 4,000 research
    studies undertaken during the last 40 years. The
    conclusion was clear When implemented well,
    formative assessment can effectively double the
    speed of student learning. (Wiliam, Educational
    Leadership, 2007-2008)

12
And Even More Recently
  • There is now a strong body of theoretical and
    empirical work that suggests that integrating
    assessment with instruction may well have
    unprecedented power to increase student
    engagement and to improve learning outcomes.
    (Wiliam, D., 2011, Studies in Educational
    Evaluation)

13
Besides Analytical and Empirical Undergirding,
Heres Spiritual Support
  • On October 13, 2009, I received an e-mail from
    a colleague in Ohio, Dr. Saundra Brennan, who
    relayed to me an invitation she had received from
    the Ohio Association of Elementary School
    Administrators. It was to take part in
  • A FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT WORSHIP

14
Formative Assessment What It Cant Do
  • It cannot raise scores sufficiently on
    instructionally insensitive accountability tests
    such as those so widely used these days to
    satisfy the requirements of the No Child Left
    Behind Act.

15
A Definition of Instructional Sensitivity
  • The degree to which students performances on
    a test accurately reflect the quality of
    instruction specifically provided to promote
    students mastery of what is being assessed.

16
Why Might a Test Item be Instructionally
Insensitive?
  • Alignment Leniency
  • Excessive Easiness
  • Excessive Difficulty
  • Confusion-Engendering Item Flaws
  • Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links
  • Academic Aptitude Links

17
Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links
  • If an item gives a meaningful advantage to
    students from higher SES families, then the item
    will tend to measure what students bring to
    school rather than how well they are taught once
    they get there.

18
A 4th-Grade Reading Item
My fathers field is computer graphics.
  • In which of the sentences below does the word
    field mean the same thing as in the sentence
    above?
  • A. The shortstop knew how to field his
  • position.
  • B. We prepared the field by plowing it.
  • C. What field do you plan to enter when you
  • graduate?
  • D. The nurse examined my field of vision.

19
Academic Aptitude Links
  • If an item gives a meaningful advantage to
    students who possess greater inherited
    quantitative, verbal, or spatial aptitudes, then
    the item will tend to measure what students bring
    to school rather than how well they are taught
    once they get there.

20
A 4th-Grade Mathematics Item
  • Which of the letters below, when folded in half,
    will have two parts that match exactly?

F (A) Z (B)
S (C) B (D)
21
A Turn Talk Task
  • Turning to a colleague (If you seem to be running
    out of bright neighbors, you might move to
    another group.), assume that your colleague is
    not familiar with instructional sensitivity.
    Thus, please explain to your colleague what
    instructional sensitivity is, and how it can
    reduce the accurate evaluation of teachers or
    schools. Then switch roles.

22
Why Partitioning It Can Pay Off
  • We will now consider a partitioning proposal,
    that is, a four-level view of formative
    assessment. Although this and other partitioning
    schemes should cleave to the essence of
    research-ratified formative assessment, they
    often help teachers clamber aboard the
    formative-assessment flotilla.

23
Four Levels of the Formative-Assessment Process
  • Level 1 Teachers Instructional Adjustments
  • Level 2 Students Learning-Tactic Adjustments
  • Level 3 Classroom Climate Shift
  • Level 4 Schoolwide Implementation

24
Level 4 Strategies 1. Professional Development 2.
Teacher Learning Communities
  • Level 3 Shifts
  • Learning Expectations
  • Responsibility for learning
  • Role of classroom assessment

Four Levels of Formative Assessment
Level 4 Schoolwide Implementation
Level 3 Classroom-Climate Shift
Level 2 Students Learning-Tactic Adjustments
Level 1 Teachers Instructional Adjustments
Learning Progressions
  • Teachers Level 1 Steps
  • Identify adjustment occasions.
  • Select assessments.
  • Establish adjustment triggers.
  • Make instructional adjustments?
  • Students Level 2 Steps
  • 1. Consider adjustment occasions.
  • Consider assessments.
  • Consider adjustment triggers.
  • Adjust learning-tactics?

25
Formative AssessmentWhy Learning Progressions
Must Lurk
  • (What a learning progression is)
  • A learning progression is a sequenced set of
    building blocks (that is, subskills and/or bodies
    of enabling knowledge) it is thought students
    must master en route to mastering a more remote,
    target curricular aim.

26
Two Learning ProgressionsBoth Useful to
Educators
  • Upper-case LEARNING PROGRESSIONS
  • Lower-case Learning Progressions

27
Target Curriculum Aim X
Subskill B
An Illustrative Learning Progression
Enabling Knowledge B
Subskill A
Enabling Knowledge A
28
A Horizontally Represented Learning Progression
29
Formative AssessmentWhat a Learning
Progression is not
  • A learning progression isnt unerringly accurate.
  • A particular learning progression isnt going to
    work for all students.
  • A learning progression isnt necessarily better
    because its more complicated.

30
A Final Turn Talk Task
  • Why, despite substantial empirical evidence to
    support formative assessment, are most Michigan
    teachers not actually using it in their own
    classes? Please explore this question with a
    neighbor or with your entire small group. Can you
    come up with any ameliorative fixes?

31
To travel more suavely along the
formative-assessment trail, read one or more of
these encapsulations of wisdom
  • Heritage, M., Formative Assessment Making It
    Happen in the Classroom, 2010, Corwin
  • Popham, W.J., Transformative Assessment, 2008,
    ASCD
  • Popham, W. J., Transformative Assessment in
    Action, 2011, ASCD
  • Wiliam, D., Embedded Formative Assessment, 2011,
    Solution Tree

32
  • Genial Jims e-mail address
  • wpopham_at_ucla.edu
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